Red Oak, North Carolina.
Typical home $334,405 (+0.6% in a year). Rocky Mount, NC metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$992 (+130%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $1,914 +1%
- $332,492$334,405 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $70,774 +27%
- $263,632$334,405 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Red Oak$1,755
- North Carolina$1,743
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 15 years.
Typical home values in Red Oak, NC rose 0.6% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Red Oak, Nash County, North Carolina
Red Oak is a town of 3,342 people in Nash County. Half its households earn more than $90,214 a year and half less, against $62,426 across Nash County; 2% of its people live below the poverty line. 96% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 4% are rented. Unemployment in Nash County was 4.6% in August 2026, and the county had 1.9% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Nash County work in schools and health care, then manufacturing.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Red Oak is a small town in Nash County, North Carolina, where almost everyone owns the home they live in. Household incomes run well above the county's, and very few people live below the poverty line. Winters are cool, with January the coldest month, and summers are hot, with July the warmest; rain and a little melted snow fall steadily through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops and the building trades also employing many. Across Nash County, some of the largest workplaces are the Cummins-Rocky Mount Engine Plant, Nash County Public Schools and Nash Hospitals. A fair number of people work from home, and the typical commute is a moderate one.
Things to do. Medoc Mountain State Park, a protected area, and Buckhorn Reservoir are both a longer drive away, for walking and time by the water. Also a longer drive away is the Imagination Station Science Museum, a good outing for visiting children or grandchildren.
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- 1,424households
- 2%below the poverty line
- 22 mintypical commute
- 13%work from home
What people in Nash County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Nash County had 40,231 jobs in 2025, 1.9% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 52° and lows near 31°; warmest in July, with highs near 90° and lows near 69°. About 44 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Rocky Mount Wilson Airport weather station, 14 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Nash County
- Cummins-Rocky Mount Engine PlantEngines, natural gas, manufacturing1,924
- Nash County Public SchoolsSchool district1,817FTE
- Nash HospitalsGeneral hospital1,602FTE
- Barnhill Contracting CompanyOverpass construction1,012
- EdwardsHeating, ventilation and air-conditioning contractors625
- First Carolina ManagementHotel management services497
- HoneywellAircraft engine and engine parts manufacturing428
- Nash Community CollegeTwo-year college424
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 96 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 12,006 people in all across the county; Red Oak has none of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and colleges from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- Winter weatherVery high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
- HurricanesRelatively moderate
- HailRelatively moderate
- Heat wavesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Red Oak’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Nash County and the Rocky Mount, NC metro.
Red Oak home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Red Oak$334,405
- North Carolina$332,159
- United States$366,157
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Red Oak11
Zip codes with a Red Oak address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Red Oak — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.